Cookies/Liquid Architecture

Now, I don’t know much about cookies (the internet kind), apart from what I quickly perused at How Stuff Works.com, but after the lecture I was wondering if they could be associated with the “liquid architecture” that was discussed yesterday.

Quote from How-Stuff-Works: “…cookies provide capabilities that make the Web much easier to navigate. The designers of almost every major site use them because they provide a better user experience and make it much easier to gather accurate information about the site's visitors.”

If liquid architecture is about creating a constantly-evolving structure, which is almost intuitive towards the users needs (which is what I got from the quote) wouldn’t cookies be a step towards achieving this?

By recording a users preferences/history, doesn’t it make it easier for a designer to create a space that is intuitive to what the user needs, with regards to what they have done before.

But the argument against cookies is the privacy issue. In regards to the internet, is it even possible to create a liquid space without breaching a users privacy? Without knowing anything about a user, how can something be created that caters towards them?

Maybe my whole argument is flawed by my lack of understanding of the “liquid architecture” concept.